Strategic advice to leverage new technologies

This Executive Update series examines the extent that organizations are using or planning to use CX practices and technologies, the status of implementing CX management, the establishment of dedicated enterprise CX groups, and the reason such groups oversee CX initiatives. Here in Part VII, we examine some of the advanced technologies organi­zations are interested in adopting for CX.

This edition of The Cutter Edge explores the social, economic, privacy, and ethical issues associated with AI adoption; how the cognitive enterprise offers a business-driven vision for organizations, and more!

This article focuses primarily on what blockchain is, the role of DLT in a digital economy architecture, and a new layer of the Internet, formed of ecosystem-type architectures. They clarify how blockchain and DLT networks have been changing the way complex enterprises (which do not trust each other) can automate collaboration. An extensive discussion of smart contracts, including the use of custom user tokens and identity and dispute resolution, elucidates how blockchain-based solutions enable consensus. The authors introduce and explain a new building block of the digital economy: a new layer of the Internet intended to create communication, storage, and execution services among many external participants. “Blockchain” is merely one name for this layer, although the name, according to them, is inadequate.

Internet of Things (IoT) applications — including connected products and services in general, and remote condition-based monitoring and predictive maintenance in particular — offer considerable opportunities for companies to provide a better customer experience (CX) via real-time customer service and support.

Steven Kursh and Arthur Schnure identify six key arguments for why blockchain technology adoption is “blocked.” The authors investigate each identified rationale, showing its repercussions and proposing potential solutions to move forward. If blockchain technology is evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, as the authors assert, it is critical to understand what the current barriers are and how organizations, gov­ernments, and communities can address them. Once these barriers are overcome, more organizations will be eager to implement blockchain to demonstrate the business efficiency of the technology and to leverage its full potential.

This article focuses on how new regulations in the financial services industry and innovative technologies enhance customer experience (CX) by making services more efficient, faster, and less expensive. The authors describe new directives — such as the second Payment Services Directive (PSD2), applicable across the European Economic Area — that, together with new technologies such as blockchain, present a window of opportunity for financial services providers. The authors highlight how service providers, armed with information about target customers and with reduced risk of exposure to fraud, can better serve consumers. The authors also show how leveraging blockchain technology and the PSD2 directive can help deliver better CX and value proposition in the financial services industry.

Iweta Laskowska explains some of the myths around blockchain, such as anonymity, transparency, and privacy. She guides the reader to an understanding of what anonymity in peer-to-peer networks means and introduces the concept of “de-anonymization of transaction history,” which involves the identification of the real-world identities of contractors (senders and recipients), as well as the value that is sent. As Laskowska suggests, “The involvement of third parties in the management and authentication of transactions is expensive and time-consuming. Distributed public networks reduce the need for central authorities and eliminate the ‘single point of failure.’” This ultimately allows for greater participation in decision making.

This article explores the business benefits and technical challenges of blockchain technology implementation in the human resources (HR) domain, specifically in a recruitment space. Recruitment is one of the most critical parts of HR management, one in which there must be an establishment of trust at the beginning of interactions between parties. The authors posit that there is a need for a unified platform where certificates and academic degrees are safely kept in order to ensure the integrity of information and to have a means of verifying the validity of the qualifications, all while ensuring privacy. They propose the design and implementation of a platform exploiting two different open source platforms: Ethereum and Hyperledger Fabric. They then analyze each architecture’s basic features and compare those features to outline lessons learned.